The Awful Thing About Closure
by wayward-river
Summary: This, at least, hasn't changed. ByaYoru. Pre-Winter War.


The funny thing about closure, she realizes one day, clear out of the blue, blue sky, is that it's called _closure_, but on what does it close?

Yoruichi ponders this as if she has all the time in the universe, with the steps of war meandering closer to their borderlines with each breath she takes. She isn't one for philosophy – too much of it depends on interpretation and _I think_ or _I say._ Philosophy is for old men, or young men with souls far too old for their eyes. She is neither of these.

(But gods, does she feel old. There is sand in her veins and ice on her breath, but the sun in her skin and the stars in her heart).

Sometimes she thinks she's lived too long, wishes to stop time as one would lift the needle from a vinyl record, watch it spin, spin, spin away the seconds.

"Well, I think you did the best you could."

She sits on the veranda of his manor, carelessly munching dried lychee fruits, the juice gathering on her lips.

Byakuya looks out onto the gardens, profile hewn from elegance, and he's so _pretty_ it makes her heart ache. A man should have no right to possess such beauty. It almost makes her jealous.

"I think you are foolish."

Yoruichi spits out a lychee seed without care. He levels her with a dangerous glare, to which she offers her toothiest grin. She knows it annoys him.

"You know, I _knew_ you would say that. It's been over one-hundred years since I've seen you, yet still I can read you better than an open scroll."

His fine black brow twitches, but Byakuya makes no response. Instead, he crosses his arms beneath the cotton of his yukata, dyed darkest blue and stenciled in green. It compliments his fair skin, makes him look almost like a man who has not had his heart scooped out with a broken bottle.

The dried lychee fruit sours on her tongue. Yoruichi spits it out into the dirt.

She kicks dirt up with her bare feet. It dusts her soles, crams between her toes, reminds her that she is alive and flawed and he is standing with her now, after more than one-hundred years of her trying to imagine how those years have treated him.

As it turns out, the tides of time have spared him of nothing. And oh, how Yoruichi wishes those waves had been fairer. There is none less deserving of their salt than him.

The cicadas whine their song into the summer air; this, at least, hasn't changed.

He steps away from the shade of the veranda, into the open sunlight, back facing her. "If I am so easy to read, the same can be said of you. You have changed the least, between the two of us."

Yoruichi fiddles with a lock of her violet hair. "Great, but _why_ am I foolish?"

He's silent for a wide stretch of time. She watches him search the clouds for something she deigns not ponder on. (Surely, he searches for the face of his dead wife, long since buried but never forgotten).

"Because," Byakuya says, turns to her, fixes her with a glacial stare, "My _best _nearly took away her life."

To his great displeasure, she guesses, Yoruichi shrugs. A casual rise and fall of her shoulders, as if she shrugs off a coat, not words anchored down to the bottom of an ocean he's buried himself under.

"Does that matter now, though? Fact is, you _didn't_ kill Rukia. I think that should matter more than what you may or may not have done."

There is a subtle twitch in his jaw. It makes her want to run her fingers over it, trace the bone beneath his silken skin. She wants to see if there's warmth in his veins, not ghosts.

"I never should have made those promises."

His words are spat as carelessly as she has spat her seeds. She feels them burn cold on her dark skin.

Yoruichi rises, careless of the dirt on her feet, the bare skin of her arms as they brush the sleeve of his yukata. He's finally grown taller than her.

For a horrible, glorious moment, she wants to kiss him, because he's no longer an errant teenager, but a man – beautiful and riddled with too many scars, and it's horrible because she knows how happy she might have made him, had she only stayed.

But she never can _stay,_ never will, to nothing and no-one.

Yoruichi's voice is the quiet of dusk, yellow eyes hidden behind the horizon, as she raises them to his own. She feels his breath still.

"Yes, you should have. Those, and more."

He's the first to draw away, breathing again.

"You're still terrible at giving advice," he says, brusquely, tipping his head in a noble fashion those one-hundred years has yet to beat out of him. Yoruichi smirks.

"And you're still a terrible liar."

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They meet again three days later.

She brings him an offering of apples, because the things she'll say will bitter her tongue.

"You know, I wouldn't have stayed even if Kisuke weren't in trouble."

He sits across from her in a perfect seiza. She drapes her legs across the floor, the sitting cushion pushed to one side. The plate of apples sits untouched between them. Outside, the skies are gray with unshed rain, wind shuddering against the shoji doors.

Byakuya closes his eyes, long eyelashes brushing his cheeks, shadowing his pale skin. "I'm hardly surprised. Why tell me this?"

She takes an apple, rolls it atop her fingers, inspecting the shine and rosy color. There's a soft-spot near the bottom. She bites into it anyway.

"Dunno," Yoruichi says between chewing. "Guess I just wanted to get it out in the open. For closure, and all that."

One of his pale hands snaps out from beneath his uniform – he hasn't had time to change – long fingers closing around an apple. His fingers twinge. She watches him set it down again, as if thinking better of his selection.

"Snob," she sneers playfully.

He looks up, eyes cast someplace between her mouth and throat. There is a subtle shift in his jaw. "You have juice on your chin. It's unbecoming."

"Juice on my chin?" Her brows furrow as she lifts an accusing finger, "I just confessed something to you, and all you have to say is 'you have juice on your chin.' What kind of response is that?"

She sees his lips twitch, almost like a smirk is trying to come to them. One never does. Yoruichi feels a strange weight of disappointment in her belly.

"My response was an appropriate one. Your confession was hardly startling."

Yoruichi bites down into her apple, spilling more juice down her lips, sucking loudly on the ripe flesh. He lets out a barely audible sigh of frustration.

And she laughs. She laughs until it shakes the walls, until she has to keep herself from falling over.

He stares at her, though neither surprise nor irritation mars his features. He waits for her to finish.

"Shit, Kuchiki," Yoruichi breathes, cheeks flushed, "I thought you had changed since you were a kid. Turns out you haven't, not as much as I thought. When you were a kid, that's the exact sound you'd make when I ate too loudly. The exact one."

Byakuya's lips part as if gone dry; for once, he seems at a loss for words, any response to _this_ confession.

She smiles at him, a lazy curve of her lips, the edges of pointed fangs peeking out. The wind continues to shiver outside.

"I suppose," he finally says, averting his gaze to one side.

The apple in her hand has been reduced to a messy corpse, the core a molted brown anchor for the flesh to cling to. Yoruichi scoots the uneaten apples to one side of the plate, setting her leftovers on the other. She stares at it, shoulders slumped.

"But I don't know. If things had been different, maybe I _would_ have stayed. Too late to find out now."

She feels his eyes on her; for once, the feeling makes something ripple up her back, though she knows not why.

"Perhaps," Byakuya tells her, voice softer than she's ever heard it.

She leaves the apples with him, a reassurance for herself; he needs their sweetness now more than she.

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He is well enough to return to the field, though Unohana warns him not to strain himself; Gin's blade pierced far too near his heart for her liking. He won't take her advice.

The Sixth Division is quiet. Many of his squad has turned in, the evening sun settling heavily on the horizon, washing his office in ruddy orange. He stays behind to finish paperwork; Renji left early on Byakuya's insistence. He has more wounds to tend to.

He feels her presence long before she appears outside his door.

"You may enter."

No sooner do the words leave his lips does the door open. She would have entered with or without his permission. Yoruichi crosses his office in three long strides, arms folded loosely beneath her breasts, ponytail thrown over one shoulder.

"Unohana will chew you out for staying late. You know how she is."

Byakuya continues writing; his wrist is poised above the paper, kanji spilling from the brush as if by magic, with precision she never could master.

"Captain Unohana needn't be aware of every nuance of my life. She also knows I hate to leave paperwork unfinished."

He sprinkles a bit of sand on the wet ink, letting it dry for a moment, before setting the finished page atop a pile of others. Only when Yoruichi groans does he look to her, one dark brow raised.

"Geeze, just looking at you doing that makes me glad I'm not a Captain anymore. How can you stand to do such boring stuff? You could be home right now, doing…whatever it is you do at home."

She leans against his desk, propping one leg against its side. She has to crane her neck in order to look at him. "What the hell _do_ you do at home, anyway?"

He starts a fresh page. "That's by no means your concern."

Yoruichi rolls her head against her shoulders, as an annoyed child would do. "Come _on,_ you have to do something. More paperwork, I'm guessing?"

She feels his spirit energy flutter, just slightly. "No."

Yoruichi pushes herself from the desk to stand beside him, inspecting his writing. "Okay, no paperwork. So, what, do you read? Write poems about your dark, lonely soul? Come on, Byakuya. Throw me a bone."

He stops mid-sentence, the character for _replacement_ missing a stroke. For a moment, she thinks she's made him angry; Yoruichi steps back just in case.

Then: "I thought you transformed into a _cat._"

Her mouth goes slack. "Wh-what? Did you just make a joke?"

"It was merely an honest question. I thought you transformed into a cat, therefore, you asking me to throw you a bone seemed odd."

He continues where he left off, as if nothing at all has changed. The character is complete.

"Well, I guess you're right," she chuckles, steps back behind him again. "I still change into a cat, sometimes. Just for old time's sake."

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Byakuya returns to the manor late into the night, when the moonlight silvers the trees. He goes to visit Hisana first, as he has done for the last fifty years.

Incense and candles are lit, filling the shrine room with the smell of wildflowers. He makes an offering of pears, newly ripened in the warmer September air.

Hisana gazes at him from within the picture frame; she looks as she always has, a flower wilting at its edges. Her eyes are the color of violets in rain. They are one of his many favorite things about her.

He cannot bring himself to think in past tense, not with her.

"So, this is something you do at home."

Yoruichi walks from the shadowed corner, slowly, carefully placing each bare foot before the other, as if she walks upon glass. Her yellow eyes are dimmed, and it has nothing to do with the darkness.

Byakuya knows he should be cross with her, for this incursion of privacy, but her softened manner has smoothed his sharp edges. Byakuya regards her with heavily-lidded eyes.

"I forgot to thank you for the apples," he nods to a second bowl placed before Hisana's picture. Three of them sit inside it, attentively arranged. Yoruichi frowns. This small touch, his meticulous care for his beloved even in death makes a stone of sadness drop inside her, all the way to her toes.

If she could, she would dive into the ocean of his loss, just to find him again.

But those waters are too dark and deep for her to brave; a tide coming in too quickly, she would surely drown in its depths.

He has drowned in them long ago.

And she remembers how young he is.

And she remembers how young he _was._

And she wishes she didn't.

It's funny in the most awful way; Yoruichi is not a woman who wishes. She takes life by its proverbial horns and tears them off. She stares at the face of Death and gives him a friendly hello.

She wants to dig her nails beneath the tissue of his scars, rip him to shreds so she can build him whole again, piece by bloody piece. But it's not her place, not in her ability to. That duty now belongs to his sister. She wants. She _wants._

She shakes her head. "It wasn't a problem. The human world has all kinds of fruit growing this time of year. Did she like apples?"

Byakuya regards Hisana's photograph, head dipped.

"Yes, but she preferred cherries."

Yoruichi stays three steps behind him, looking over his shoulder at _her_, with her sad, sad eyes and wan cheeks.

"I'll bring those next time, then."

He turns his back to her.

"Is there a reason for your visit, at this hour?"

Yoruichi rubs the nape of her neck. "Well, no, not really. I just wanted to see what you were up to, and since there's nothing going on at the shop, I didn't want to return there, either."

The candles are put out, their smoke smelling of bitter ash.

"Then I'll ask you to leave."

Yoruichi stifles an irritated sigh. It would be disrespectful, here, in this place, under these circumstances.

She opens the shoji doors, letting moonlight rush in, illuminating the paleness of his skin. With the darkness of his uniform and hair, he nearly disappears into the shadows.

"Yeah, I'll bring those cherries next time. The good stuff."

Byakuya is silent.

Yoruichi almost leaves, one step away from the doors, toes barely over the threshold. She bites her lip.

"You'll never find closure this way, Byakuya."

She leaves, and its hours later before she realizes that, maybe, closure isn't what he wants.

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Because that's the awful thing about closure; what has been closed can be opened again.

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End file.
